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Film study, focus key to Tide freshman OT’s success

Alabama offensive lineman Jonah Williams (73) talks with the media at the Alabama Media Day at Amalie Arena in Tampa, Fla. on Saturday January 7, 2017. The College Football Playoff National Championship Game is on Monday.(Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)Buy Photo

TAMPA, Fla. — While many of his fellow four- and five-star recruits were just beginning to indulge themselves inside Alabama’s “Captains’ Lounge” — an arcade-style playroom with billiards, air hockey, pop-a-shot, virtual racing games and even Madden available in both Xbox and PlayStation on three 70-inch flat-screen TVs — Jonah Williams headed upstairs.

The 6-foot-5, 295-pound five-star offensive tackle from California was a little reticent until he stepped inside Alabama’s offensive line meeting room and film of the Tide’s 19-14 win over rival Tennessee from earlier that day was already cued up.

And when Alabama assistant coach Mario Cristobal handed him the video remote, Williams’ eyes instantly widened and a large smile formed across his face as if he’d just been awarded the golden ticket.

“On my recruiting visit, they said: ‘Usually we’re going to send (recruits) to the player’s lounge’ to go play whatever it’s called, air hockey and stuff like that, ‘but we’re going to set you up in the film room and give you 30 minutes … and you can just go through the Tennessee game,’” Williams recalled.

“So I’m sitting there with my dad and I’ve never had like really good film like that before, so I’m just like, ‘Look at this left guard here,’ and that type of thing,

“I just loved it. That was the first time I had access to (film study) like that. … To really have it with the remote in your hand, I was just eating it up.”

Taking full advantage of the opportunity, the self-described “film junkie” immediately went to work, gleefully clicking through different plays and formations, all the while his mind filled with visions of himself playing right tackle for the Crimson Tide.

“To see the formations and the footwork of the players, he was just eating it up,” Williams’ father, Dane, said. “And he still does. He’ll sit down when we’re together and pull the iPad out, and he’s just going through things all excited like it’s Christmas morning pretty much.”

While starting quarterback Jalen Hurts has received much of the attention as Alabama’s true freshman sensation — and rightfully so — Williams’ ability to step in and fill a gaping hole at right tackle has been essential to the top-ranked Crimson Tide being undefeated entering Monday’s championship game against No. 2 Clemson.

But it’s his near-religious fascination with film study and a unique sense of “fun” that has helped make Williams one of Alabama’s top offensive linemen this season and a major key to its future success.

“Depending on the method you’re watching it, (film study) can be fun,” Williams said. “My friends will make fun of me for saying that.”

Williams’ film study habit is just one of several unique personality traits that have defined the driven and highly intelligent offensive lineman and made him an instant hit among his teammates and coaches.

“Jonah’s played extremely well, (it’s) pretty amazing that he’s been able to play with the kind of poise and execute the way he has,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said in October. “He’s a very bright guy, and really made tremendous amounts of improvements from spring to the fall, been one of the most consistent players on our entire team. We’re really pleased. (Right tackle) was an area of concern going in, but he’s done an outstanding job for us.”

Ahead of the game

From the moment Jonah was born, Katherine Williams knew he had the making of a football player — just maybe not the right position.

“When he was born, we thought of him as a linebacker — that was just his build, that was his look,” Katherine laughed this week.

Weighing in at just under 11 pounds — the average weight of a baby brought to full term is approximately 71/2 pounds — and measuring out at roughly 22 inches long, Jonah Williams has always been on the large side.

It’s something that helped him ultimately settle on football as his preferred sport, despite just as much success at shot put and track and field.

But size wasn’t the only thing that showed Jonah was naturally a little head of the curve.

At a year old, little Jonah was already running around and riding his older sister’s tricycle down the driveway.

“His drive sort of physically has been there since he began walking,” Dane Williams remembered. “He’s always been advanced or aggressive in terms of his sort of physical pursuits. He’s just connected and (was always) in tuned with what’s going on around him.”

About seventh grade, Jonah told his parents he wanted to play college football — and he went about to make that a reality, beginning with building a makeshift gym in his garage.

But working out on his own at home wasn’t good enough. He wanted to separate himself even more.

His answer? Waking up at 5:30 a.m. to make the mile-and-a-half trek every day before school so he could be at Atlanta’s Marist High when head coach Scott Mandy opened the weight room at 6:30.

“It was relaxing, it got my mind right before the day,” Williams said. “It was something I wanted to do, it wasn’t anything I felt like I had to do.”

When the family moved to California before high school, Williams continued to seek individual improvement any way possible.

He found that in extra workouts and utilizing game film to study his weaknesses, a habit then-Folsom High co-head coaches Kris Richardson and Troy Taylor introduced to him as a junior.

“That’s when I started to realize that (watching film) could put me ahead of other people,” Williams recalled, “and I remember Coach Richardson — my O-line coach at Folsom — I’d always do a TA period and he was the PE coach, and I’d sit with him on the golf cart and help him out … and they’d be drawing a play on an iPad or something, and watching film, and I’d just kind of listen to them talk, and I started to think about all those things.”

Just for ‘fun’

While Williams’ dedication to film study has benefited him on the field, it has made things as simple as taking time off nearly impossible — both for himself and those that might be with him at the time.

Alabama sophomore guard Ross Pierschbacher complained last month that even watching a football game on TV can turn into a study session for Williams.

“Jonah Williams, he’ll come over and we’ll watch football, (and) he’s just sitting there in my ear talking: ‘Oh, they ran this blitz and this stunt and they should have done this,’” Pierschbacher said. “It’s like I’m watching film right now sitting next to (Alabama offensive line) coach (Brent) Key. I just want to relax a little bit.”

But for Williams, there’s never not an opportunity for improvement.

“I think if I’m going to sit and watch college football, I don’t really want to just glaze over and kick my feet up and watch it, I might as well practice,” Williams said. “If I want to play on that field, I might as well practice in my head.

“My friends and family, anybody close to me, always makes fun of me because I don’t know how to have an ‘off day.’ … I just don’t know how to have free time.”

Richardson learned that pretty quickly. He’d turn his phone back on the morning after a Friday night game and see several dozen text messages or phone messages from Williams. Each one represented an individual play from the game night before that he could have made a correction.

It’s a tactic he’s carried with him to Alabama.

“He points out everything, every little detail that he can get better on, like if he takes one to many kick-steps — it doesn’t make a big difference on the play, but he knows it’ll help him get better,” said Kooper Richardson, a redshirt freshman offensive lineman at the University of California Davis and the son of Folsom’s head coach.

“He was just always getting better.”

Even when he’s just sitting around casually watching football.

“In his mind, he actually puts himself at the tackle spot and sees what he should have done, what he could have done, what he would do in that kind of situation,” his mother, Katherine, said.

“It’s always interesting to see what he’s seeing,” added his father, Dane. “I’m seeing one thing, and he’s seeing it 10 levels deeper and is guessing, obviously because he doesn’t know what the plays are or what is being called or what the responsibility of the lineman is, but sort of immediately translates it into (plays Alabama runs).

“It’s almost like a whole lot of fun.”

Fun is a subjective word around Williams, who is casually reading the book “Meditations” by stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius — “It’s all how I think” — and is a big fan of watching how the stock market shifts from day to day.

“I’m so competitive and so analytical, I wanted to find a profession potentially after football that would keep me interested, and I found that in investing and the stock market,” Williams said Saturday. “It’s always moving and always changing and you really have to have a competitive edge to stay successful there. I think the challenge is what interests me, and it’s more the game than the money.”

And while the NCAA limits what student-athletes can do with their money — “They make sure I don’t have any money to do that,” he joked — Williams’ mind will continue to be focused on doing everything it can to help him to get better, even when he’s simply trying to relax.

“I think it’s kind of a gift and a curse, I’d say, because sometimes I’d be laying in bed and I just want to watch a football game and chill,” Williams said, “but I’m sitting up and just trying to think what I’d do if I was that right tackle, if I was that left tackle. So I think at some point it would be nice to relax, but I can’t really turn that switch off.”